Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

ScratchEd – Community site for educators using Scratch

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:33:00 GMT

The people at the Lifelong Kindergarten Research group at MIT recently unveiled ScratchEd a new community site for educators who are using Scratch.

The goals of the site are listed in the introduction:

To better support the activities of these educators, I designed ScratchEd - a companion site for Scratch educators to share their stories, exchange resources, ask questions, and find other educators.

To the numerous educators who are working with Scratch and to the numerous educators at workshops and conferences that have helped get ScratchEd to this point: thank you. I hope that we can work together to make ScratchEd a place that is useful to our practices as educators and that provides a sense of what is possible with Scratch.

Looks like this should become a very useful web site for educators. Check it out.

Blog Reviews – Thinking About Computer Science Education

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:32:00 GMT

Continuing with my plan to review and help promote some of the more useful and interesting blogs I follow I’m going to talk about two blogs that hit a little more of the theory and thought behind computer science education. These two blogs are both from people at universities. They are not aimed at high schools per se but I think there is a lot of overlap between introductory college computer science and high school computer science. In any case these two people always make me think and that is a good thing.

Computing Education Blog

Mark Guzdial is a professor at Georgia Tech and is one of the key people behind their Media Computation program. He’s done a lot of work at helping introduce computer science to students beyond computer science majors. His current blogging location (Computing Education Blog) is a new location and you should still be able to find many of her previous posts at his old Amazon.com blog (Mark Guzdial's Amazon Blog). One particular highlight from his recent posts is Women Programming, Just Not In CS which is some really interesting observations about how women view programming and computer science.

In need of a Base Case

Leigh Ann Sudol is currently a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University but was a high school computer science teach in New York state for a number of years. Leigh Ann is the person who trained me to grade the AP CS exam the year I was a reader. She has an amazingly quick mind and talks fast at times as well. Fortunately she writes well; unfortunately she doesn’t write as often as I’d like. But what she writes is good. Recently she had a series of blogs posting her observations from the IES Research Conference.

So please check these blogs out when you get a chance. And join their conversations.

Interesting Links July 6th 2009

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:06:00 GMT

Last week was NECC and boy was I ever busy. On the other hand the places on the Internet were slow in some ways and busy in others. The education Twitter space was all NECC all the time. Many education bloggers were not blogging because they were just too all out busy. Searching for blog posts using the NECC09 tag this week should turn up a lot of news from there. But I did find some interesting tidbits that I do want to share with you and make more “findable” on the Internet.

There is a new @Microsoft account on twitter and one of the first things they Twittered was “Anyone can make games now, Kodu is available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace http://bit.ly/3wlWKo” Yes, it’s true Kodu for the Xbox 360 is now available in Xbox Live marketplace. I’m pushing for release of a PC version for schools and other educational use. So are many others so I am cautiously optimistic.

Do you remember QBASIC’s GORILLAS.BAS? I do. I lost lots of time playing that in my earlier days. Well a version of it is this week’s Small Basic sample of the week.

In other Twitter news, @MichaelHyatt Answers to the Top 10 Twitter Objections If you haven't read it I recommend it. It may change your mind about Twitter.

Interesting post from the schools matter blog Good Working Conditions and Respect for Teachers - A Foreign Concept Microsoft’s Anthony Salcito has a post along the same lines from the same conference at Assessments...are we doing it all wrong

Scott Thompson blogs links to Word information he has been taking about at Microsoft Office Help – Monday’s NECC Follow Up it was great to see him at the Microsoft booth. (We’re not related so don’t hold me against him. )

I found this interesting conversation with Sir Tony Hoare who invented the Quick sort among other accomplishments. I was able to meet him a couple of years ago at a Microsoft Research event and he was fascinating to talk to. Quite some guy.

NCWIT still has some of the great free materials for promoting computing to students that I blogged about last week - Gotta Have IT.

Sponges and Participants

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Earlier this week Scott McLeod wrote a somewhat critical blog post (NECC - Vendor excess (aka Do pink Cadillacs really sell printers?)) about the exhibit hall at NECC. It was a thought provoking post not the least because I was working for an exhibitor at NECC. What I concluded was that there are several types of people who come to conferences like NECC. I loosely named them Sponges and Participants. I’m not completely happy with the terms because everyone participates and everyone is out to soak up as much as they can but bare with me.

Sponges have as their main goal to soak up as much information, pick up as much literature, get as many ideas as possible and learn about all the things they didn’t have (critics would say make) time to learn during the school year. Once they get home others may “squeeze” them to get some of that learning out of them. Others (see my trouble maker post) will work hard to spread the information over objections. These people love the exhibit hall. Besides attending all the sessions they can and listening intently the also comb the exhibit hall for ideas and information. These are the people the exhibitors want to attract. At a conference as huge as NECC and only limited time in the day exhibitors need those eyes and hears to make their pitches. The pitches are often brief and buzzword filled “elevator pitches” because no one will listen long. They want to get to the next booth. Someone who does want to talk in depth may find that the exhibitors knowledge is not very deep or that they don’t have as much knowledge of education as one might like. These are the exhibit staff the “participants” find frustrating but more on that in a second. For many people this doesn’t matter. They will do more homework later on the Internet or perhaps call a salesperson later if the ideas gel for them.

The people I call participants are more active in their attendance. They are asking all sorts of questions – often deep questions – at the sessions and at the booths they visit. These are the people who hang out at the blogger cafe talking at length to experts and other people trying to learn and understand deeply. These people also tend to be the people who engage in conversations (usually online in blogs, Twitter, nings and other discussion forums). These people are at NECC for the conversations and the networking – growing their personal learning network. The emphasis on glitz, glitter and fast sales pitches do not work for these people. They are their to share and to engage in high bandwidth conversations that are not possible online.

I think in some ways these two groups exist in separate realities at a conference like NECC. I would not suggest that one way is right/better and the other is wrong/worse though. I would say that different people have different needs. Participants seem to feel more at home at conferences like EduBloggerCon and wonder out loud why NECC can’t be an unconference. The sponges often (though not always – teachers are fearless) feel uncomfortable with the idea of an unconference. They like structure. They want to listen. The sessions and exhibit hall at NECC work for them. Good for them for coming – often on their own money.

Either way NECC is big enough for both groups. Kudos to ISTE for facilitating the blogger cafe (although we’ll need more chairs and power next year). Participants are often the bleeding edge speakers and presenters that the sponges are there to learn from and we can’t afford to drive them away. We also need the multitude of sponges to bring ideas back to their schools. We’re all in this together.

Technorati Tags: necc,necc09,necc2009

Recruiting Young Women into & Retaining Them in Computing Majors

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:50:00 GMT

If you are in the New Jersey area and interested in seeing more young women in computing majors this may be of interest to you. This seminar is designed for both educators and parents.

NJIT and Stevens Institute of Technology

are pleased to invite you to

A Real World Connections

Parents and Teachers Seminar

Recruiting Young Women into, and Retaining Them in Computing
Majors: A High School and College Level Initiative (ACM-W Project) Based
Upon a 35-Year Psychological Study
Dr. David Klappholz

Stevens Institute of Technology

DATE: Thursday, July 9, 2009

REFRESHMENTS: 4:30 – 5:00 PM

TIME: 5:00 – 7:00 PM

LOCATION: GITC Building 4415

Abstract:
Gender equity in computing has long been a national goal advanced by those concerned with fairness and by those who know that the female point of view improves the design and development of software systems. Unfortunately, though, the percentage of young women entering computing-related majors keeps falling, and the female dropout rate is higher than the very high male dropout rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a large increase in the need for B.S. and M.S. computing graduates in the next decade. The largest untapped pool of potential computing majors and, eventually, computing professionals, is science- and math-talented high school students, but only about 10% of entering undergraduate majors in computing majors are female.

Despite the many initiatives aimed at attracting young women, the number of female computing majors keeps dropping. In this talk we will discuss results of an extensive psychological research study that followed thousands of science- and math-talented students from middle school to middle age and that explains why many previous initiatives have failed. We will also discuss a new high school and university level initiative that is supported by these psychological studies, and that has recently been designated an ACM-W project. We will invite interested attendees to personally participate in, and encourage their high schools, universities, and/or employers to participate in this initiative.

Bio:
Dr. David Klappholz is an associate professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology, where his specialty is software engineering. Dr. Klappholz spent a Fall 2002 sabbatical with Barry Boehm at USC and has worked with Prof. Boehm every summer since then. In addition to his interest in empirical software engineering research, Prof. Klappholz works, under NSF funding, with an educational psychologist on issues relating to engineering education pedagogy. He is also a member of a Stevens-based, DoD-supported, team that is crafting a reference standard M.S. curriculum in software engineering, a curriculum with a heavy systems engineering slant. In a previous incarnation Prof. Klappholz did research, supported by NSF, IBM Research, DoE, and others, on parallel machine architecture, automatic code parallelization, compiler optimizations, and, in his professional infancy, on natural language understanding and translation.

Directions to NJIT

http://www.njit.edu/about/visiting/driving.php

GITC Building is number 13 at the following map

http://www.njit.edu/campustour/

Parking information at NJIT can be found at

http://www.njit.edu/parking/

Would You Wear A Ribbon That Labeled You a Trouble Maker?

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:41:00 GMT

I remember when I was teaching elementary school as a technology specialist. Stickers were king. Little kids will do almost anything for a sticker. I thought that once students moved to high school that was all over but it turns out that some high school kids will do a lot for a sticker as well. I think it is the recognition as much if not more than the sticker itself though. Students like to have something visible to show that they have accomplished something or that they are a part of some thing. Look at the t-shirts and other clothing that students like to wear. How much of it has words on it that identify them as part of something. Most of that is either athletic or social related though. It is so seldom that it is academic related.

Why don’t students wear more to indicate academic accomplishment? Did you ever wonder why we don’t have “honor student” jackets like we have “letterman jackets?” Because it is not cool? Doesn’t it worry you a little that being smart is not cool enough to show off but being able to hit a baseball is? People wear things to represent things they are proud of. Why aren’t students proud enough of their grades to show it off on their clothing?

This week at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC this year but it will be called ISTE next year) a lot of attendees wore ribbons on their badges. These ribbons denoted the usual conference indicators, speaker/presenter, board member, SIG member, etc. But there were also other ribbons that are less traditional. I picked up one that said edublogger for example. And there were several versions of Twitter ribbons. But one of the most coveted ribbons said “trouble maker.” People really wanted to wear those. I did get one by the way and it was the only ribbon(of the five I wore) that anyone asked “where did you get that?”

I think that is interesting as well. The teachers who asked about a “trouble maker” ribbon are often seen as trouble makers in their local schools. They disrupt the status quo and a lot of schools, and administrators, and other teachers resent change. many of the teachers at NECC, especially it seems the ones who hang out at the blogger cafe but many more besides, are not happy with the status quo. They want to change things – to be disruptive influences – and make things better. These people are the exciting people to talk to. These are people who are in it for their students; who want to change the world through education. These are the people who put themselves and their careers at risk (some more than others of course). But boy are they sure exciting to talk to and learn from. At their own schools trouble maker may be a derogatory term but at NECC which is about change and using technology in new and different ways being a trouble maker is a badge of honor and many wear it proudly.

Technorati Tags: necc,necc09

Jeannette Wing on Computational Thinking

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:31:00 GMT

The kick off speaker for the SIGCT Forum at NECC this year was Jeannette Wing from Carnegie Mellon and the National Science Foundation. Her paper Computational Thinking, CACM vol. 49, no. 3, March 2006 is a must read for, well, just about anyone in education or in the computing field in my opinion. I also recommend a PDF of slides that he has used for a number of computational thinking talks similar to the one given at the forum.

One of the questions I hear often is “what is computation?” Jeannette Wing defines “Computing is the automation of our abstractions” Computational thinking then becomes selecting the right abstractions and the right computer (where computers are defines much more broadly than just computing machines) to solve problems. I really like these descriptions because they really bring out how broad and wide ranging computational thinking really is.

Dr. Wing also talks about how important computational thinking is to research in all disciplines these days. She relates that using computers the help sequence the human genome helped many in the biology community start to appreciate computers and computational thinking as important tools in that field. Much of this relates to data. Scientists and researchers are collecting more data than they can store let alone analyze. So computers and computer learning are the only way sense can be made out of all this information.

The challenge for the education community that Dr. Wing brought up was “What are effective ways of learning (teaching)
computational thinking by (to) children?” I see these as huge issues. Sure we can use programming to some extent. Tools like Kodu, Alice and Scratch and others make programming possible at younger ages. Although I think we have a huge shortage of people who are really prepared to teach the concepts. Concepts being of course much more important than the tools themselves.

Dr. Wing is an exciting speaker because her enthusiasm for the subject is clear, evident and contagious. It’s encouraging to have someone like her being at NSF. If you get as chance to hear her talk take advantage of it. And if not, read her paper and look through her presentation deck.

Gotta Have IT

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:16:59 GMT

I stopped by the NCWIT booth at NECC today (it’s a partner booth outside room 147A in the conference center) and they asked me to blog about their Gotta Have IT materials. So of course I am. It’s a really great set of materials and they are really useful for building awareness and encouraging interest in computing. If you are at NECC you should really stop by and pick up a set of these materials for use in your school. Want more information or can’t get to NECC? Visit the Gotta Have IT web site where I got the description below:

Gotta Have IT is an all-in-one computing resource kit designed with educators' needs in mind. A select set of high-quality posters, computing and careers information, digital media and more, the resource kit builds awareness and inspires interest in computing. Gotta Have IT is for all students, but is especially inclusive of girls

And if you do stop by their booth outside room 147A tell them Alfred from Microsoft sent you. :-)

Technorati Tags: ncwit,necc,necc09,necc2009

Recent Links of Interest June 29th 2009

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:14:03 GMT

The Visual Basic team has a new site called “I'm a VB” that they are having some fun with. You’ll find a bunch of interviews with Visual Basic developers – both those who develop the product and those who develop products using Visual Basic.

My friend Andrew Parsons aka @MrAndyPuppy pointed me to Bulgaria's entry for Imagine Cup. It’s a cool system for teachers that lets a class full of students your their own mice on one computer at the same time. It has some interesting possibilities for schools who can’t afford a lot of computers. It is just one of the interesting projects at the web site set up for the people’s choice voting for the international Imagine Cup finals. Check them all out.

Speaking of friends, Leigh Ann Sudol aka @lsudol wrote a post called The new image of computing which asks “what the right message to grow the number of computer scientists?”

Have you seen that the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta is now available? Free protection against viruses & other malicious software.

I forget where I found the link to this article and I apologize for that. Top Indian CEO: Most American Grads Are ‘Unemployable’ Could it be true? Whose fault might it be? It’s pretty scary really. How do we fix things so that no one says this in the future?

Dan Waters posted a two part series on his blog about audio programming. Dan’s a musician and understands audio a lot better than I do.

And last for today but not least, the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal for Computing Teachers (JCT) is now out. Check it out.

More To Do Than Can Ever Be Done

Alfred Thompson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:49:41 GMT

Also more to learn than can ever be learned. I’m in Washington DC for the National Educational Computing Conference. Today, Saturday, is a day of pre-conference events and there are many of them. Something for everyone I’m sure. Several things for many of us. For me I had to choose between the CSTA CS & IT Symposium and EduBloggerCon. Both were today and both are the biggest and best of their kind anywhere. But since I can only be in one place at a time I had to pick one. I picked CS & IT.

CS & IT is the single biggest and best one day computer science teacher professional development there is. This was the 10th event and the ninth year it has been held. I’ve been to most of them and by now I know a lot of the regulars. Plus there are new people every year. Several people who read my blog where there and I was able to meet them which was great. It does so much to improve the online interactions to have a face and a voice to go with the Internet identity. That would be enough of a reason for me to go by itself. But of course there are the sessions. I attended an interesting session on K-8 computer science that was done by the people who put together the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) document on Computer Science For Grades K-8? With Curriculum Resources. They did some good work on that one let me tell you. Also I sat in on a presentation on using Adobe Flash in the classroom that was very interesting.

The opening keynote was by Jane Margolis and Joanna Goode is two of the co-authors of Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing. It was a great introduction to the learning's they cover in their book and the programs they are working on to address the problems they found. This book is highly recommended – I dare say almost mandatory – for people who want to really understand why the numbers of minority students in computer science are so low. It’s an eye opener to say the least.

The closing keynote was by Debra Richardson, Dean at UC Irvine, who gave an inspiring talk about the importance of computer science education for everyone. A lot of discussion at the end about the problems with making this happen. This rolled back a little in some ways to the kick off keynote. Getting schools to make CS more central in the curriculum is going to be tough but many of us really truly deeply believe it needs to be done.

My congratulations to the symposium organizing team. Job well done!

EduBloggerCon is also a great event and I went to the first one several years ago. I understand (been watching a little on Twitter) that there are on the order of 100 education bloggers and other Web 2.0 education practitioners there. I did manage to drop in on an after event party and saw a bunch of great people – some I met for the first time and some I know online and some I knew in person and online. They all agreed that this was a great EduBloggerCon. Perhaps next year the two events will not conflict. A guy can hope.

Technorati Tags: ebc09,csit09,csit,edubloggercon,csta,necc,necc09

Making a List, Checking it Twice

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:29:21 GMT

A while back the College Board dropped one of the Advanced Placement Computer Science exams – the so-called AB exam. (About 14 months ago and I wrote about dropping the APCS AB exam here) Ever since then there has been a lot of discussion about the AP computer science curriculum in specific and the high school computer science curriculum in general. The College Board is working on a ne AP CS exam. The current A exam is still going to be around and the word is that it is in for some minor changes. One of these is a possible change in name to “AP Computer Science: Programming.” Now cynics and critics (of whom I have been known to be one) might wonder out loud why not “AP Computer Science: Java” but that’s not likely to happen. In theory the language could change one of these days. But there is also a totally new AP CS course in the works. This one is likely to be called “AP Computer Science: Principles” though I don’t believe any of these names are set in stone just yet.

What is this new course going to be like? Well that is hard to say as the Commission the College Board appointed to work in it is just getting started. But if seems like “there’s interest in providing teachers with choices of what language they teach. ” Mark Guzdial who is on the Commission lays out some of the issues involved in a recent blog post called “Nudging Computing Education” In this post he says that an unlimited set of choices is unlikely. I have no doubt that he is right. He also talks about some of the pros and cons of some languages - C++/Java and Scheme.

Now all of these languages have their supporters and detractors. Personally I think anyone going into a career (academic or industrial) should learn C++ at some point. I am not a fan of it (or Java for that matter) as a first language. Likewise I know people who are having great success teaching computer science with Scheme but also know students who all but dropped the idea of taking additional classes because of bad experiences with that language. Truth is – no language is perfect. But most of us have our favorites. So now a pitch for my recommendation for a language to make the short list for the new AP CS Principles course- Visual Basic. Come on you knew that was coming. :-)

On the pro side Visual Basic has an easy to learn syntax. many students find the semi-colons and curly braces of C-style languages and the complex nesting of parentheses of Scheme confusing and frustrating. That seems, in my experience at least, to be less of a problem with Visual Basic. Or other versions of Basic such as Small Basic for example. Then there is the matter of graphical user interface programming. Sure it is not by itself that important a concept but it can be part and parcel to students experiencing success and creating something that looks and feels “real” and relevant. Getting students interested and letting them have fun should be an important part of a first programming experience. With Visual Basic this is simple, fast and easy. Done right an instructor can keep students focused on code and concepts while the students enjoy creating software they can show friends. Plus there are features in the IDE like Intellisense that make exploration and self-learning easy. I think that is a plus.

Now critics will say that it is a proprietary language and only runs on Windows. True. But that still means it runs on most computers that most schools have. Cost is not really a barrier because the Express edition of Visual Basic is a free download. Students can even get the professional edition for home use for free through the DreamSpark program. And even if a teacher doesn’t want to use it that is not a good reason, in my opinion, from excluding it from a list of options for other teachers to choose from.

People might argue for a C-style first language because the APCS: Programming course is in Java. I have two replies to that. One is that after several years of starting with Visual Basic and following up with C++ (as C-style a language as it gets) I found that students with a good foundation of the concepts had little if any trouble picking up C++ from as inadequate a teacher as me. The other possibility is to include C# on the list of accepted languages.

Why? Well because C# has the same ease of creating GUIs that VB has. The same powerful and helpful IDE that VB has. And the colons and curly braces others seem to love and cherish. So that is two languages I’m suggesting. I suspect that there will be some strong support of Python as well.

Python is a dynamic language that is seeing increasing use in education. So the question for the commission is how many languages for their list.

I would argue that C++/Java/C# are all close enough that to include one means you can probably include all three. Given how many people are using Visual Basic for non-AP courses and the desire to see this new AP course reach many more schools than the present exam I think it should be included as well. Even if you don’t buy all of my earlier arguments. Python and Scheme? Probably or some people will scream pretty loudly. So does the list look like:

C++
C#
Java
Python
Scheme
Visual Basic

We could do worse. The one monkey wrench in this list is Scheme. While the other languages are procedural/object oriented languages Scheme is a functional language. Things work a little differently (some would say a lot differently) with functional languages. I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision or worse yet write the test that includes Scheme with the other languages. Not that that isn’t a worthwhile goal.

So what do you think? Any language you would add or subtract? Anything your seriously object to? Leave a comment or better yet hunt me down at NECC and give me a piece of your mind.

Technorati Tags: NECC,NECC09,NECC2009,APCS

Come Find Me at NECC

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:24:55 GMT

Early tomorrow I get to the airport to fly to Washington DC for NECC. Saturday is the CS&IT Symposium run by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) with sponsorship from Microsoft Research, Intel and some company that sells ads on Internet search results. Googol or something like that. :-) I’ll be talking about certifications with Anita Verno from Bergen County Community College. I’m hoping to see a lot of great high school computer science teachers there. Plus sit in on a couple of other sessions. It’s a day well spent.

Once NECC starts for real I’ll be all over I expect. I have committed to doing booth duty at the Microsoft booth and will probably be there around lunch time most days. I’ll post my schedule once I have it for sure. I’ll be on Twitter (@AlfredTwo) but your best bet to get a hold of me is to send me email (alfredth (at) microsoft.com) or send me a direct message on Twitter. Direct messages on Twitter get sent to my phone as text messages and I plan to check for them regularly. Or drop by the Microsoft booth and ask someone when I’ll be there or leave me a message there.

I also plan to spend some time at the Blogger Café (map see page 2).

I will be toting my laptop around (with an Xbox 360 controller) so if you’d like a demo of Kodu, XNA Game Studio, Visual Studio or just ~~plain old~~ the brand new and exciting release candidate of Windows 7 I’ll be happy to oblige. Or if you want to talk about Microsoft’s education programs for computer science teachers or students (MSDN Academic Alliance) or Dreamspark I can do that. Or if you just want to give someone from Microsoft a piece of your mind my ears and mind are open.

Technorati Tags: csit09,necc09,necc,necc2009,csta,kodu,dreamspark

Blog Reviews - Organizations

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:27:00 GMT

There are a number of organizations, professional groups, whose blogs I find particularly useful. The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), it’s parent organization ACM and National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) are some of these.

CSTA Blog

The CSTA blog is updated by various members of the CSTA board and by their amazing Executive Director, Chris Stephenson. I find it essential for keeping up with news from CSTA such as Leadership Cohort Updates, Alternative Certification for CS Teachers, and Communication Skills for Computer Science Students. I highly recommend CSTA membership for anyone who teachers computer science in pre-collegiate education.

Communications of the ACM: blog@CACM

The CACM blog has posts from some of the top people in computer science. Some of the posts are very technical but many are potentially interesting for students, teachers and CS hobbyists alike. For example Matching Digital Photos to Identify Wildlife is about computer-assisted photo-identification of animals. Low-Cost Sensors Help People Turn "Green" is about “sensors for phones and homes that give people feedback on their habits and encourage them to save resources.”

National Center for Women & Information Technology

NCWIT is all about expanding the participation of women in technology. They provide a lot of resources for educators and others who are interested in this goal. The blog is updated a couple of times a month and updates readers on NCWIT programs such as the NCWIT Symons Innovator Award or Updates from the NCWIT Meetings.

XNA Game-Themed CS1 Lab Workbook

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:21:00 GMT

It seems like the XNA Game development curriculum keeps coming and coming. About two weeks ago I posted links to XNA curriculum that was highlighted on the Academic Resource Center. Today I learned about a new XNA Game-Themed CS1 Lab Workbook that has been developed at the University of Washington.

This "Laboratory (lab) Workbook" is designed for instructors of introductory programming (CS1) classes. The materials presented uses video game-like ("Game-Themed") examples to reinforce fundamental programming concepts. These game-themed examples are implemented based on a simple library, XNACS1Lib, such that neither the instructors nor the students are required to have any background in computer graphics or games.

The workbook is divided into three sections:

Section 1: Installation guide and tutorials on XNACS1Lib. This section guides the reader through basic software installation and then presents simple tutorials on how to work with the XNACS1Lib library.
Section 2: Lab workbook examples. This section is organized into seven independent topic areas. Instructors can teach their existing CS1 classes without any alterations and assign readings from Section 2 of this workbook as lab activities, extra readings, and/or assignments.
Section 3: Sample Game-Themed Assignments. This section contains seven sample programming assignment modules. Each module is designed around a "well-known" topic area (e.g., 2D array) and has two accompanied assignments: a console (traditional text-based) version, and a game-themed version. These two versions of the assignment are technically equivalent. The console version can be used as a reference for instructors unfamiliar with graphics or games programming. Solutions and sample grading rubric for each version are provided.

The lab workbook is a result from the Game-Themed Introductory Programming Project funded by Microsoft External Research: http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/index.php

Interesting Links June 22 2009

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:35:00 GMT

It’s the end of the year for a lot of us. Not the calendar year of course but the school year or the fiscal year. I’ve been working on my input for my year end review a lot this week. And doing some preparation for NECC (I’ll be there from Friday of this week on – hope to see some of you there.) and other things for the next fiscal and school year. Not much time for blogging, Twittering or especially for relaxing. Still I did run into some interesting links to share with you all. BTW if you run into things you think I or the people who read my blog would be interested in please let me know. Send me email at AlfredTh (at) Microsoft.com, use the contact link on this web site or Twitter to me @AlfredTwo.

Have you seen the new version of Deep Zoom Composer? The team has added a bunch of new features that people have been asking for for a while. This might be the thing for some interesting graphic design projects.

With Deep Zoom Composer, you can take a collection of images of various resolutions (including large, high-resolution images) and arrange them into a composition. You can then export or publish the composition as either a single high-resolution image or a set of individual images with different resolutions. Once you export or publish your composition, you can use a standard broadband connection to quickly display and navigate a large, detailed image or a panorama of images that might otherwise be extremely slow to view.

Check out the Expression Blend and Design blog for more information on this update of Deep Zoom Composer.

Hilary Pike found this fun historical video of a new broadcast introducing the Internet. It includes an interview with a young Bill Gates – check out his glasses. :-)

The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) has a new document on Computer Science For Grades K-8? With Curriculum Resources!

Joe Stagner AKA the MisfitGeek has a new Podcast called Episode #2 - Does VB have a future? If you’ve ever had doubts about the future of Visual Basic this is the interview to go listen to. Speaking of Visual Basic, Anders who was the driving force behind C# is also working on VB these days. Check out "Future Directions for Visual Basic" by Anders Hejlsberg and Jonathan Aneja Also the Visual Basic blog has an article about Implicit Line Continuation which explains how VB 2010 will do away with the need to explicitly specify some line continuations.

Speaking of NECC! If you are headed there you may be interested in getting some information about Microsoft’s presence at NECC. Well other than me. :-) Stop by the booth and listen to some presentations and learn about what Microsoft is doing with education.

Interested in robotics? The Microsoft Robotics team is Twittering @MSRobotics. last week they announced that Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2 has been released. See the new Microsoft Robotics web site.

Do you talk to students about coding standards? Personally I think that is something students should be exposed to early. From @pbarone and @zainnab I learned about these Free C# and VB Coding Standards Reference Documents.

Products from Microsoft keep coming out supporting more (natural) languages. Last week it was announced that Small Basic V0.5 is Now Available in English, French and Spanish. A lot of teachers are already using this tool for beginning programming courses. Maybe it is something you will want to check out as well?

Looking at 1:1 computing initiatives? Or perhaps you are thinking about bringing white boards into the 21st century? From @Microsoft_EDU I found this link from @chronicle to an article called Why a Tablet PC Beats Your Whiteboard which links to the real list - 11 Reasons Why a Tablet PC is Better. Take a look.

Looks like the beta version of Alice 3 in available now. This is the version with avatars from The Sims.

Last but far from least, Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity at a TED talk that I stumbled upon last week. It makes for interesting listening. What are you doing in your teaching to promote creativity?